ACT Health is the branch of the ACT Government responsible for providing the range of coordinated health and health care services available in the ACT. ACT Health Supply Services — a unit of ACT Health — has joined HIBCC AU, the Australian affiliate of the Health Industry Business Communications Council.

ACT Health Supply Services supplies the two Canberra public hospitals and manages supply for the major private hospitals in the ACT including John James Private, National Capital Private and The Calvary Private.

ACT Health is in the process of implementing a point of use data capture tool for tracking the supply of implanted prostheses and other devices directly to the patient. The system resides on an iPAQ hand held computer with a Symbol barcode scanner attached. It utilises Pocket PC Creations software and interfaces with the supply inventory management system.

“One of our main concerns has been to obtain accurate and reliable standard product data, and to ensure that this data is always up-to-date. The UPN Repository goes a long way towards providing this since many of our major suppliers are already using the UPN Repository”, said Adrian Scott – Supply Manager for ACT Health.

“ACT Health's signing to HIBCC AU confirms the value of HIBCC AU's services to hospital providers and we are delighted to have ACT Health as our member. We are very enthusiastic about working with them to make ACT Health's iPAQ implementation a success”, said Kirk Kikirekov – President of HIBCC AU in relation to ACT Health's signing.

Established in 1984 by leading healthcare associations, HIBCC is the primary standard-setting and educational organisation for bar coding and e-commerce initiatives in the world of healthcare. HIBCC 's mission is to improve the quality, efficiency and cost effectiveness of the healthcare industry through automated business communications.

HIBCC has global reach via a network of HIBCC offices located throughout the world. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) have accredited HIBCC standards. HIBCC AU was established in March 2002 to address the growing awareness in the health industry of the need to become more efficient through supply chain reforms.